If You Think Our Politics Are Crazy...
So I've been following the election results from Israel. Oh vey, it's so meshugeh.
Actually, it could have gone a lot worse. The polling leading up to the election suggested that Likud, the hard-right party, was going to easily eclipse Kadima, a party committed to negotiating a peace based upon a two-state solution. In the event, Kadima actually edged out Likud, though that still might not be good enough. These elections are actually really important because they will likely profoundly impact the path of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, so the process is worth a bit of explanation.
In the U.S., we vote for two house of Congress at regularly scheduled elections every two years. The structure of our democracy makes it very difficult for more than two parties to amass any significant power at any given time. This means that one party always constitutes a majority in a house, and the other constitutes the minority, and usually the same party controls both houses. In addition, we vote separately for a President who has very real and important powers. Thus, the head of state may be from an entirely different party as the leaders of the legislature.
Most democracies use some variation of the parliamentary system, which is what Israel uses. First, there's only one house of legislature, or parliament. Second, voters don't vote for people, they vote for parties. And there are lots and lots of parties. Parties offer up a slate of candidates and are awarded seats in the parliament, or the Knesset in Israel, based on how many votes they get. If a party gets enough votes for ten seats, the first ten candidates listed on its slate become MPs (members of parliament). The complexity is that with all those parties, rarely does a single party win enough seats to take an outright majority. Then things get interesting.
There are 120 seats in the Knesset, so it takes 61 to "form a government." In other words, one party has to find 61 MPs to unify around its choice for leader of parliament. That person then becomes prime minister, the chief executive of the country. Israel has a President, but his powers are largely ceremonial. The prime minister leads the country, and unlike an American President, by definition has a majority of the legislature supporting him or her. Occasionally, coalitions fracture, leaving the prime minister unable to find the support of 61 MPs. In such a case, no government can be formed, parliament is dissolved, and emergency elections are held. That's how we wound up with these elections in the first place. The coalition of parties that previously formed the government broke apart, and so a new parliament was needed.
So let's fast forward to election night. Bucking the predictions of pollsters, Kadima, led by Tzipi Livni, appears to have won the most seats with 28. Likud, led by Binyamin Netanyahu, appears to be right behind them with 27, pending the counting of just a few more votes. So far, so good for Kadima, but Livni still needs to find 33 more votes before she can form a government. She can count on 13 votes from the Labor Party, which was a junior partner in the previous government. After that, things get very unusual, at least from an American perspective.
What comes next is a lot of horse-trading and intense negotiations over things like what parties get to fill which Cabinet posts. Frequently smaller parties will back whatever party gives them the sweeter deal rather than what party is more ideologically in tune with them. After Kadima, Likud and Labor, there are only two other parties big enough to be worth courting: Yisrael Beiteinu (15 seats) and Shas (11). Yes, I know, Israeli parties have far more interesting names than ours. If Kadima can join both YB and Shas to support them, that's 61 votes right there. Even if they just got one or the other, they could probably cobble together enough votes from the seven smaller parties to just barely get over the hump. But Shas was the party that pulled out on them and necessitated new elections in the first place. And YB seems to be far closer to Likud on the Palestine issue. If Netanyahu can win the backing of YB and Shas, that would get him 53 votes, and he could surely find the rest among the smaller parties.
In other words, then, it may take no less than five parties coalescing to form a government in Israel, one that would be led by the guy who finished second in the election. And that's the most likely scenario at the moment, although it's possible that Livni could still get it done.
That's a little troubling, because a Likud coalition would likely take a very hawkish stance toward Palestine at a moment otherwise pretty ripe for real progress in negotiations. Kadima supports the consensus solution that pretty much the rest of the world has been cajoling both sides to accept for some time: a secure Israel with normalized relations with its Arab neighbors and an independent state for Palestine roughly conforming to the pre-1967 borders, with some acre-for-acre swapping of land to accommodate Israeli settlers, and compensation to Palestinian families unable to be returned to their homeland. That's really the only workable blueprint for a real peace. In a lot of ways, Likud understand this, too, but Netanyahu would certainly take a more bellicose and recriminatory stance in negotiations and be less likely to offer reasonable concessions to the Palestinian side. This, in turn, would make President Obama's pursuit of peace in the region incrementally more difficult. The Israeli left seeks a solution that will leave both sides more secure, while the Israeli right is still bogged down in a mentality that negotiations will have winners and losers, and Palestinians need to be the losers.
Peace in the Holy Land will be extremely difficult no matter who becomes Israel's prime minister. For one thing, the Israeli political divide is still but a tiny gap compared to the fundamental chasm between Palestine's Fatah and Hamas factions. But with a newly focused American administration, there is a lot that can be done to advance the cause of peace over the next four to eight years. It's very important to take advantage of that opportunity, and Kadima appears to be in far better shape to do so. The chances of their forming a government look much better than they did a few weeks ago, but they still don't look all that great.
Despite the fact that they, you know, "won" and all.
Actually, it could have gone a lot worse. The polling leading up to the election suggested that Likud, the hard-right party, was going to easily eclipse Kadima, a party committed to negotiating a peace based upon a two-state solution. In the event, Kadima actually edged out Likud, though that still might not be good enough. These elections are actually really important because they will likely profoundly impact the path of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, so the process is worth a bit of explanation.
In the U.S., we vote for two house of Congress at regularly scheduled elections every two years. The structure of our democracy makes it very difficult for more than two parties to amass any significant power at any given time. This means that one party always constitutes a majority in a house, and the other constitutes the minority, and usually the same party controls both houses. In addition, we vote separately for a President who has very real and important powers. Thus, the head of state may be from an entirely different party as the leaders of the legislature.
Most democracies use some variation of the parliamentary system, which is what Israel uses. First, there's only one house of legislature, or parliament. Second, voters don't vote for people, they vote for parties. And there are lots and lots of parties. Parties offer up a slate of candidates and are awarded seats in the parliament, or the Knesset in Israel, based on how many votes they get. If a party gets enough votes for ten seats, the first ten candidates listed on its slate become MPs (members of parliament). The complexity is that with all those parties, rarely does a single party win enough seats to take an outright majority. Then things get interesting.
There are 120 seats in the Knesset, so it takes 61 to "form a government." In other words, one party has to find 61 MPs to unify around its choice for leader of parliament. That person then becomes prime minister, the chief executive of the country. Israel has a President, but his powers are largely ceremonial. The prime minister leads the country, and unlike an American President, by definition has a majority of the legislature supporting him or her. Occasionally, coalitions fracture, leaving the prime minister unable to find the support of 61 MPs. In such a case, no government can be formed, parliament is dissolved, and emergency elections are held. That's how we wound up with these elections in the first place. The coalition of parties that previously formed the government broke apart, and so a new parliament was needed.
So let's fast forward to election night. Bucking the predictions of pollsters, Kadima, led by Tzipi Livni, appears to have won the most seats with 28. Likud, led by Binyamin Netanyahu, appears to be right behind them with 27, pending the counting of just a few more votes. So far, so good for Kadima, but Livni still needs to find 33 more votes before she can form a government. She can count on 13 votes from the Labor Party, which was a junior partner in the previous government. After that, things get very unusual, at least from an American perspective.
What comes next is a lot of horse-trading and intense negotiations over things like what parties get to fill which Cabinet posts. Frequently smaller parties will back whatever party gives them the sweeter deal rather than what party is more ideologically in tune with them. After Kadima, Likud and Labor, there are only two other parties big enough to be worth courting: Yisrael Beiteinu (15 seats) and Shas (11). Yes, I know, Israeli parties have far more interesting names than ours. If Kadima can join both YB and Shas to support them, that's 61 votes right there. Even if they just got one or the other, they could probably cobble together enough votes from the seven smaller parties to just barely get over the hump. But Shas was the party that pulled out on them and necessitated new elections in the first place. And YB seems to be far closer to Likud on the Palestine issue. If Netanyahu can win the backing of YB and Shas, that would get him 53 votes, and he could surely find the rest among the smaller parties.
In other words, then, it may take no less than five parties coalescing to form a government in Israel, one that would be led by the guy who finished second in the election. And that's the most likely scenario at the moment, although it's possible that Livni could still get it done.
That's a little troubling, because a Likud coalition would likely take a very hawkish stance toward Palestine at a moment otherwise pretty ripe for real progress in negotiations. Kadima supports the consensus solution that pretty much the rest of the world has been cajoling both sides to accept for some time: a secure Israel with normalized relations with its Arab neighbors and an independent state for Palestine roughly conforming to the pre-1967 borders, with some acre-for-acre swapping of land to accommodate Israeli settlers, and compensation to Palestinian families unable to be returned to their homeland. That's really the only workable blueprint for a real peace. In a lot of ways, Likud understand this, too, but Netanyahu would certainly take a more bellicose and recriminatory stance in negotiations and be less likely to offer reasonable concessions to the Palestinian side. This, in turn, would make President Obama's pursuit of peace in the region incrementally more difficult. The Israeli left seeks a solution that will leave both sides more secure, while the Israeli right is still bogged down in a mentality that negotiations will have winners and losers, and Palestinians need to be the losers.
Peace in the Holy Land will be extremely difficult no matter who becomes Israel's prime minister. For one thing, the Israeli political divide is still but a tiny gap compared to the fundamental chasm between Palestine's Fatah and Hamas factions. But with a newly focused American administration, there is a lot that can be done to advance the cause of peace over the next four to eight years. It's very important to take advantage of that opportunity, and Kadima appears to be in far better shape to do so. The chances of their forming a government look much better than they did a few weeks ago, but they still don't look all that great.
Despite the fact that they, you know, "won" and all.
posted by Ithakid | 1:21 PM
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